Commercial Space – Education Opportunities

All three sectors, industry, academia and government, are concerned about the decreasing availability of skills and talent in the commercial space area. Retirements of veterans and insufficient pursuit of science, technical, engineering and math (STEM) education are the prime causes. Many projects are underway at all education levels to address this challenge.

Commercially-provided suborbital access can be part of a renewed NASA and other government agency commitment to advancing safe, innovative, affordable and sustainable micro-g research. It can also provide hands-on education/training for the next generation of students and space researchers.

With New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Spaceport America officials and supporters of commercial space development in attendance, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport broke ground on June 19, 2009, in southern New Mexico. This event delivered on the promise of an exciting new age for space exploration and development, as well as a bright future for the people of New Mexico and their children.

I was a presenter/panelist for a Turkish-American Business Conference on facilitation of bi-lateral business development, and profiled a joint CubeSat project ready for launch. Turkey wants to expand its capabilities in science, technology and innovation to produce new high-tech products. Options were identified to support bi-lateral collaboration relevant to commercial space.

If you haven't heard about the announced agreement between the Solaren company to provide space-based solar power to PG&E beginning about 2016, and the utility's guaranteed purchase of it for 15 years, you may have just returned from a trip deep in the Amazon. PG&E notes in a post on their new Next100 blog titled "Solaren: The Media and Pundits Weigh In" , that within two weeks of the announcement it was "reported, analyzed, debated, praised and ridiculed on more than 26,000 web sites". Now, that's buzz, but included in this tidal wave are some good insights into current developments very worth noting.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the Moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit images and data back to Earth. Unlike previous decades where space activity was largely government-funded, companies and organizations are responding to challenges like this and demonstrating that space exploration is no longer limited to multi-billion dollar programs. But what value other than prestige can be gained by participants in this competition? What's the bang for the big bucks?